Daily Shaarli
February 22, 2024
With frequent changes to my Ansible roles it often becomes tricky to keep track of which version of a particular role was executed for a particular play.
This is not thoroughly tested yet, but my approach is simple: each role contains a task that writes its git repo state (a git log formatted one-liner containing last commit hash, date, author, etc.).
These tasks are set to write to a log-file per inventory host, which is for two reasons: to avoid drowning in the default log file defined by log_path
in ansible.cfg
, and because log_path
cannot be overridden by a play or role.
This results in a log-file (one per inventory host) looking something like this:
Started playbook execution at 2024-02-22 12:34:32.327042
Role 'locales' last commit caa6355 2024-02-21 23:38:31 +0100 by solarchemist
Role 'digikam' last commit 16f0643 2024-02-21 22:50:49 +0100 by solarchemist
Playbook 'workstation' last commit 4775cf7 2024-02-20 22:53:56 +0100 by solarchemist
Ended playbook execution at 2024-02-22 12:34:55.913856
My implementation illustrated in code below.
In a role:
- name: Log the last commit and git repo status to playbook log-file
local_action: >
shell git -C {{ role_path }} log
--pretty="Role '{{ role_name }}' last commit %h %ci by %cn" -1 >>
logbook-{{ inventory_hostname }}.log
args: { chdir: "{{ playbook_dir }}" }
become: true
become_user: "{{ local_user }}"
In the playbook:
vars:
local_user: "{{ lookup('env', 'USER') }}"
pre_tasks:
- name: Write a start message to the playbook log
ansible.builtin.shell: >
printf "\nStarted playbook execution at {{ now() }}\n" >> logbook-{{ inventory_hostname }}.log
run_once: true
delegate_to: localhost
args: { chdir: "{{ playbook_dir }}" }
become: true
become_user: "{{ local_user }}"
changed_when: true
tags: always
tasks: [...]
post_tasks:
- name: Log the current commit of this playbook
local_action: >
shell git log
--pretty="Playbook '{{ playbook_dir | basename }}' last commit %h %ci by %cn" -1
>> logbook-{{ inventory_hostname }}.log
args: { chdir: "{{ playbook_dir }}" }
become: true
become_user: "{{ local_user }}"
tags: always
- name: Write an end message to the playbook log
ansible.builtin.shell: >
echo "Ended playbook execution at {{ now() }}" >> logbook-{{ inventory_hostname }}.log
run_once: true
delegate_to: localhost
args: { chdir: "{{ playbook_dir }}" }
become: true
become_user: "{{ local_user }}"
changed_when: true
tags: always